Soundwave breaks over Australia

Date: February 24 2013

Martin Boulton

CALIFORNIA punk-rock band the Offspring have sold more than 40 million albums and played at some of the world's biggest music festivals.

But never in 30 years of touring the world has the band's founder, Dexter Holland, been part of a festival line-up as big as this year's Soundwave, which also features Metallica and Linkin Park and is expected to draw 75,000 fans to Sydney's Olympic Park on Sunday.

Soundwave's three east coast legs - Brisbane on Saturday, Melbourne next Friday and Sydney - are sold out, along with Adelaide. The 45,000 ticket holders for the final leg in Perth take the overall tally to 270,000 people.

''We co-headlined Soundwave a few years ago and really enjoyed it, so when we got asked back we said, 'Sure thing.' I can't believe the line-up. I've never been part of a festival this big and with this many really big bands,'' Holland said.

Coming mere weeks after the alternative rock, pop and electronic line-ups of the Big Day Out and the St Jerome's Laneway Festival sold out their Sydney events with fewer than Soundwave's 75,000 tickets between them, Sunday's heavier line-up features Slayer and Anthrax among the ''five or six different musical tribes'' coming together, Soundwave founder AJ Maddah said.

Laneway founder Danny Rogers attributes Soundwave's success to a number of factors. ''It's way less about fashion. It's its own genre, it's its own world, it's its own scene''.

with George Palathingal

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